This invention relates to a foundry furnace and particularly to a foundry furnace for light nonferrous metal, comprising a longitudinal chamber made of a heat-resistant material, including close to one end an inlet for the material to be melt, such as scrap and/or bars, a slag outlet at least at one end, an outlet flow passage including a dispensing opening at the other end, and heating elements for melting the metal, including direct radiating resistance elements in the cover of the chamber and vertically free moving dip-elements extending downwardly from the cover of the chamber for flowing on and into the melt metal.
In foundry furnaces of the above mentioned type the dosage opening for feeding out the melt metal has been placed in the bottom of the melting chamber or in a shallow flow passage close to the cover. Both of these solutions have disadvantages.
A leakage in the dispensing opening situated in the bottom of the foundry furnace requires the furnace to be shut down, i.e. it must be emptied and the leakage must be repaired. This causes a considerable operation break down and the heating element in the melt is destroyed and must be replaced. It would thus be an advantage if the furnace could be shut down for repairing an eventual leakage without emptying the furnace from its melt.
In a foundry furnace in which the dispensing opening for the melt is situated in a shallow flow passage close to the cover of the melt chamber e.g. the valve of the dosage opening can be replaced without emptying the chamber from melt. This solution has anyhow the disadvantage that the melt chamber can not be used as a buffer space. Feeding in scrap and bars and feeding out melt varies and it would thus be beneficial if the melt chamber could buffer these variations and differences between feeding in and out.